Where's Winona Kirk?

[kkozoriz1]

But Kirk doesn't have Daddy issues. He only even mentions him once. Pike's the one stat seems the have injected himself into the "Daddy Issues". If George's death affected anyone it's Pike not Kirk.

 

[Therin of Andor]

My own solution would be to insist that the supporting characters are not assigned a sex during the scripting stage but randomly prior to casting...

Male and female actors were auditioned for Janeway, and plans were in the wings for a female Chakotay if a male had won the leading role.

Nichelle Nichols read Spock dialogue at her original Uhura screentest, since no Uhura scenes had yet been written.

IIRC, Ben the bartender in "The Lower Decks" episode of TNG delivered lines originally written for an unavailable Whoopi Goldberg.

Lore was female in the first draft of "Datalore". She was described as an android equivalent of Red Adair. Until they realised that Brent Spiner playing both parts would be a compelling set of scenes.

There have been stage productions of "Whose Life Is It Anyway?" with a male lead or a female lead (with no rewriting at all), and there have been all-female productions of "The Odd Couple".

But I certainly wouldn't mandate that all supporting roles always be left genderless until the auditioning process. Casting people do like to have something solid to go on when deciding who to send for each audition. Otherwise every part requires a cattle call. But random allocation of genders? Nah, don't think so. I've worked in enough employment situations to know that randomized gender makeup can really effect a workplace, both positively and negatively, and writers should be able to tinker with these ratios to affect their plots.

 

[Pauln6]

But I certainly wouldn't mandate that all supporting roles always be left genderless until the auditioning process. Casting people do like to have something solid to go on when deciding who to send for each audition. Otherwise every part requires a cattle call. But random allocation of genders? Nah, don't think so. I've worked in enough employment situations to know that randomized gender makeup can really effect a workplace, both positively and negatively, and writers should be able to tinker with these ratios to affect their plots.

I agree that gender should be assigned prior to casting calls, just after the parts are written. I also agree that the gender of some characters could be set by the writers but I think that the problem with tinkering with the ratio more generally is that this method has highlighted a consistent, significant bias against women. If, even after 40 years, the traditional method hasn't brought about anything even close to equality then it seems to me that a different method is required!

It's also worth noting that sometimes external events affect casting. I believe that Brooke Bundy was originally going to play the chief engineer in a recurring role in Season 1 of TNG but she was unavailable (although they did replace her with a succession of 3 men, which was a bit biased). The narn make-up caused various problems for numerous actresses in B5 too.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

I believe that Brooke Bundy was originally going to play the chief engineer in a recurring role in Season 1 of TNG but she was unavailable (although they did replace her with a succession of 3 men, which was a bit biased).

Maybe that's why that doorknob in "Skin of Evil" kept saying his full name every time he got on the comm. He was afraid people would forget him.